International School of Information Management

University of Mysore

Project Report on Scenario of Cyber crimes in India

Submitted To – Prof. AVR Rao

Dated on 30/10/2010

Submitted By,

Names Roll No Email id Class

Rajalekshmi C 22 rajalekshmi@isim.net.i

n

2011

Samatha K P 28 samatha@isim.net.in 2011

Sowmya S 33 Sowmya@isim.net.in 2011

Scenario of Cyber crimes in India

Summary:

The number of crimes in cyber space is rapidly multiplying in India. It is important for

every citizen of India to know about what is happening in cyber world and how to protect

ourselves from these crimes. Each time newer, cunningly plotted plans have been

induced by the hackers to harm the users of internet to create a chaos in the cyber

world. We have to take measures to lessen it in every little way possible to make our

country a better place to live in. In the report we are going to mention about revolution of

cyber crimes in India, some recent cases and the statistics in Indian scenario.

Introduction:

The below picture clearly shows that the cyber crime had emerged in early 1970’s and

had very basic cases, because of the advancement of the technology, the cases as

increased rapidly and today Indian Cyber crimes are one of the big scandalous crimes

which are increasing geometrically in a democratic country like ours – INDIA. According

to the research taken by internet crime complaint centre of USA, it was found that our

country is ranking 5th position in number of cybercrime cases [1]. It’s not an

achievement to tell proudly outside. We should be ashamed of this status and should

take necessary actions to reduce the amount of cyber crimes.

[2] www.slideshare.net Cyber Crime Law Enforcement in India.

In the earlier times, crimes were quite easy to detect but after the emergence of criminal

activities in the world of cyber space it has become a tedious work to detect such crimes

and punish those people who indulge in such malpractices.

[2] www.slideshare.net Cyber Crime Law Enforcement in India.

The reason for increase in the cyber crime is because of following reasons:

1. The people were feared because of the negative publicity.

2. They were not aware that police had equipped to handle such cyber crime

cases.

3. They were feared of further cyber attack.

4. They were not aware of Cyber Laws.

5. They were fear of false arrest concerns.

Types of Cyber Crimes:

Cyber Crimes can be broadly classified in to three categories:

1. Crime against Government: Cyber Terrorism and etc.

2. Crime against property: software privacy, copyright violation and etc.

3. Crime against people: Example: Cyber Pornography, Stalking and etc.

Statistical Survey of Cyber Crimes in India:

According to National Crime Records Bureau [3], cyber crimes are punishable under

two categories:

1. Offences registered under the IT Act and

2. Offences registered under IPC (Indian Penal Code).

1. 288 cases were registered under IT Act during the year 2008 as compared to 217

cases during the previous year (2007) thereby reporting an increase of 32.7% in 2008

over 2007. 22.6% cases (65 out of 288 cases) were reported from Kerala followed by

Karnataka (57), Maharashtra (37), Andhra Pradesh (25) and Tamil Nadu (21).

36.4% (105 cases) of the total 288 cases registered under IT Act 2000 were related to

obscene publication / transmission in electronic form, normally known as cyber

pornography. 90 persons were arrested for committing such offences during 2008.

There were 138 cases of Hacking with Computer System during the year wherein only

56 persons were arrested. Out of the total (138) Hacking cases, the cases relating to

Loss / Damage of computer resource/utility under Sec 66(1) of the IT Act were 40.6%

(56 cases) whereas the cases related to Hacking under Section 66(2) of IT Act were

59.4% (82 cases). Andhra Pradesh (19), Maharashtra (15) and Kerala (10) registered

maximum cases under Sec 66(1) of the IT Act out of total 56 such cases at the National

level. Out of the total 82 cases relating to Hacking under Sec. 66(2), most of the cases

(54 cases) were reported from Karnataka followed by Kerala (7) and Delhi (5).

2. 176 cases were registered under IPC during the year 2008 as compared to 339

cases during the previous year (2007) thereby reporting decrease of 48.1%. Andhra

Pradesh reported maximum number of such cases (78 out of 176 cases or 44.3%)

followed by Punjab 20.4% (36 cases) and Chhattisgarh 10.8% (19 cases).

Majority of the crimes out of total 176 cases registered under IPC fall under 2 categories

viz. Criminal Breach of Trust or Fraud (79) and Forgery (55). Although such offences fall

under the traditional IPC crimes, these cases had the cyber overtones wherein

computer, Internet or its enabled services were present in the crime and hence they

were categorized as Cyber Crimes under IPC.

The Cyber Forgery (55 cases) accounted for 0.08 % out of the 66,579 cases reported

under Cheating. The Cyber Frauds (79) accounted for 0.48% of the total Criminal

Breach of Trust cases under IPC (16,487).

The States such as Andhra Pradesh (105), Punjab (45), and Chhattisgarh (24) have

reported higher arrests for Cyber Crimes registered under IPC.

The Cyber Forgery cases were the highest in Andhra Pradesh (33) followed by Punjab

(7) and Tamil Nadu (4). The cases of Cyber Fraud were highest in Andhra Pradesh (21)

followed by Punjab (19) and Gujarat (16).

[4] CRIME IN INDIA 2008 COMPENDIUM, NATIONAL CRIME RECORDS BUREAU

MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS.

Some of the real time scenarios of cyber crime in India:

1. One case was seen in an online social networking community website”ORKUT”. Here

a fake profile of a woman was created on Orkut which comprises the name of the

lady, her relationship status, her personal information like her residence address, phone

number. They mention the correct name with her real photograph and give false

information about her, maybe as a woman with “loose character”. Few members of

Orkut who find that information would try contacting her causing her lot of mental torture

as she will be victim who is being defamed in a society. This sort of a crime comes

under Section 67 of Information Technology Act and section 509 of the Indian Penal

Code and those who are punishable are the directors of Orkut along with those who

create and published fake profiles. [5]

2. This case was encountered in the year 2008 on March 18th where a 16 year old

science student of class 12 from Ahmedabad was caught for sending a prank email with

a subject highlighted as breaking news to a private news channel – It was quoted as

follows “Threatening to blow up Andheri Railway station by Dawood Ibrahim gang”. This

case was filed in Andheri police station under section 506 of IPC and transferred to the

cyber crime investigation cell. During the enquiry, the Police came to a conclusion that

the email was sent from a local cyber café and on further investigation they managed to

find out that this work was done by a group of college students who revealed that the

email was sent by a single person. On 22nd March 2008 the police arrested the boy

involved, who upon questioning confessed he did it for fun to just have his prank

message flashed on news channel. [6]

3. Bandra-based business man Al – Naseer Zakaria email account was hacked by an

unknown person. This person sent mails from Zakaria’s account to his relatives

requesting for money claiming that he was stranded in abroad. Zakaria filed a case in

Mumbai police station with regard to this where he came to know another similar case

like his i.e. the case of adman – turned civic activist Gerson D’Cunha whose email was

hacked for appeal of money. His relative felt something fishy about the mails and he

replied back to find out the culprit, for that he got a response in which his resident

addresses was given as London. The police officer doubted that the accused may be

staying temporarily in London to collect the money and flee as soon as he receives it,

since the transfer of money between people accounts in western nations is easier unlike

India. In Zakaria’s case, hacking might be due to his reply to an email with Microsoft

logo, asking for his personal information such as user name, password and home

country, he did not think that this was fake and he gave all the content which resulted in

to these problems.

Cyber expert Sanjay Pandey revealed one dangerous fact that spam mails have been

sent with pictures, one click on such picture will install harmful virus in our computer

which has the ability to lock all our files automatically. Such nuisance creators demand

you to pay up if you want your file to be unlocked. Several people in India become the

prey of such frauds due to very less awareness of internet security. [7]

4 One more interesting scenario of cyber stalking which is the most common kind of

cyber crimes in India is the case of Ram Prasad who was an ex working staff in the

ISiM office. Malicious mails were sent to few students as well as the other staff

randomly and all the mails indicated defamation of the college, slandering the name of

our executive director as well. She lodged a complaint to the Cyber Crime Bangalore

Police, who on investigation caught him. This was a real example which we witnessed

as he was sending mails to our fellow students also. On further enquiry, he confessed

that he created multiple false email id’s and sent mails from various cyber café in

Mysore giving outrageous details about the institution as he had grudge on the director

and ISiM management. This is the case of cyber stalking and the stalker case can be

booked under section 509 of the IPC and under section 66A of IT Act 2000, for harming

the reputation of a woman. The punishment for such cases according to IT Act is of 3

years/fine. But the case is still going on and the person is released on bail. [8]

Safety measures:

Some of the measures which can be taken to safeguard the country from such crimes

are as follows:

1. Maintaining complete security of our credentials.

2. Creating awareness among the Indian citizens especially the states with poor

literacy.

3. Avoid trusting strangers and prevent sharing personal information.

4. Precautions should be taken while performing any kind of transactions in the

internet in order to avoid being the target or victim of malicious mails.

5. Do not hesitate to file a complaint to the nearby police when you encounter such

crimes or rather be a victim to it.

6. Training the police officers’ to effectively combat cyber crimes.

Conclusion:

In our report we have seen some of real time cases of cyber crimes in India. We also

studied how cyber crimes are increasing and spreading in different new forms in these

years all over the country and also the statistics of these cases as well. It is very

dangerous to survive in the country, if this grows in this ratio. The IT Act and IPC should

increase the level of punishments to those people who are involving these kinds of

criminal activities. Users should be aware of all these acts and the punishments in order

to fight against crimes. Victims should not scare to fight; now acts are very user friendly

and will help victims in an effective manner.

References:

[1] http://sify.com/news/india-ranks-fifth-in-reporting-cyber-crime-cases-news-internet-

jehaKucedad.html

[2] www.slideshare.net Cyber Crime Law Enforcement in India.

[3] http://ncrb.nic.in/cii2008/Statistics2008.pdf Crime in INDIA 2008 Statistics, National

Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs.

[4] Crime in INDIA 2008 Compendium, National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of

Home Affairs.

[5] www.asianlaws.org Real world cyber crime cases, this document are an extract from

the book Cyber Crime & Digital Evidence – Indian Perspective authored by Rojas Nag

pal. This book is available as courseware for the Diploma in Cyber Law and PG

Program in Cyber Law conducted by Asian School of Cyber Laws, cited on

21.10.2010.

[6] http://www.alertindian.com/node/18

[7] http://cybercrime.planetindia.net/got-scam-mail.htm “Received an Email from Someone

Stranded Abroad? Think Twice before sending financial Help” By Nitasha Natu, TNN dated on

January 07, 2009.

[8] http://www.indiaforensic.com/cyberstalking.htm INDIA FORENSIC, a soft solution to

fraud problems, India.